“Old Man Jones offered me fifty cents a day to hire him, and me and the family sure do need the money.”

Rusty could feel heat rising in his face. He prepared to remount. “I’ll go over to the Jones place and fetch him.”

Gaskin took hold of Rusty’s bridle reins. “You can’t do that. Old Man Jones paid me for ten days, and he ain’t used them up yet.”

Rusty trembled with anger. “Then I reckon you’ll have to give him his money back.”

“But it’s done spent, and I don’t know how I’ll go about gettin’ any more.”

“You might try sendin’ your boys out to work.”

“You act awful high and mighty, Rusty Shannon, because you-all have got a bigger farm and a lot more money.”

“You’ve got just as much land, but you’re all too lazy to work it proper. As for money, I can’t remember the last time we had twenty dollars cash.”

He lifted his foot toward the stirrup, but Eph Gaskin grabbed the back of his coat. “You ain’t goin’ noplace.”

Rusty whirled and swung a knot-hard fist at him. Gaskin’s head snapped back under the impact. The other brother rushed in, and Rusty found himself entertaining two at the same time. The scrap lasted only a minute or so. When it was over, both younger Gaskins were sitting on the ground with bruises and contusions, showing no inclination to get up.

Fowler Gaskin shook his fist but dropped it quickly when Rusty took a step toward him. “I’m a crippled-up old man. The law wouldn’t like it, you hittin’ a crippled-up old man.”

Eph Gaskin did not arise, but he growled, “We’ll get you, Rusty Shannon. You just wait, we’ll pay you back.”

Rusty said grittily, “You’d better worry about how you’re goin’ to pay back Old Man Jones for the loss of the mule.”

Riding away, he could hear Fowler Gaskin railing at his sons for letting “that redheaded son of a bitch” whip both of them. Rusty rubbed his skinned knuckles in satisfaction. It had been the best day’s work he had done all winter.

It had been three days since the fight. Now Rusty hitched Chapultepec alongside a young mule Mike had traded for. The young one had a double portion of stubbornness and only a small portion of the older mule’s intelligence. It was constantly testing the limits of Rusty’s patience, but at least it helped keep his mind occupied so he did not dwell on grief over Mother Dora or brood too much on the troubles brewing between North and South. These seemed far away except when Mike went to the settlement. Then they came close to home.

Rusty had the wagon half full of deadfall timber when he stopped to drink from a jug he had brought beneath the seat. His attention was caught by movement on the road from the east. Preacher Webb approached on a bay horse. The minister altered his course when he spotted Rusty down by the river. Rusty held the jug high so he would see it. “Water, Preacher? It ain’t coffee, but it’s wet.”